Christian Schad
German, 1894-1982
Portrait of Composer Josef Matthias Hauer
INV-2748
Christian Schad
German, 1894-19821927
Portrait of Composer Josef Matthias Hauer
Christian Schad German, 1894-1982 →painting
Date
1927
Medium
Oil on wood
Dimensions
61 × 50.2 cm (24 × 19 3/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Through prior purchase with funds provided by Mary and Leigh Block in memory of Mrs. Loula Lasker
Christian Schad met the Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer in Vienna in 1926 yet chose to portray him in front of a cross section of the Eiffel Tower. For Schad, this structure recalled Hauer’s chromatic music—based on the 12-tone scale—through its blend of aesthetics and mathematics.
In the late 1920s, Schad quickly emerged as a leading artist of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. These avant-garde artists introduced portraiture marked by icy precision and razor-sharp detail, making pointed cultural critiques. Their works’ startling clarity stood in stark contrast to the exuberant color and expressiveness that had dominated German painting over the previous two decades.
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